The main character in my book, Aaron Collins, is a hard-working farmer who quite frankly loves it. His chief quarrel with his mother was that she was a high-class Bostonian emigree determined to save him from such a low-class fate with its inevitable opportunities to mingle with the rabble.
Aaron won that fight, and, as the story opens, he is hard at work on the next campaign, to save his land from the moneylenders who can’t wait to foreclose. I have to admit that part of this was nostalgia. Fifty years after I left the farm, I still miss it, and my most common lottery castle-in-the-air has been a small farm, complete with a couple cows, a horse, a pig, a few cage-free chickens — and the absolutely necessary sharp-tongued but faithful retainer, someone out of a Charles Dickens novel, to do all the heavy lifting.
That’s the dream.
Now and then, I bump up against reality, like this week’s battle against the wilderness in my front yard. Florida has been invaded by a nasty bush called the Brazilian peppertree. I prefer to call it Poisonberry because of its toxic sap which causes blisters and a rash. I might also call it the Phoenix, because no matter how many times I chop it down, it rises from its own ashes to attack again.
Over the past couple of days, I have cut it back to bare stumps on the ground. Though I protected as much of my skin as possible, in the broiling hot Florida sun, no less, I know it got its revenge. As I write this, I can feel my cheeks tightening, meaning that my face is starting to swell. And worst of all, I’ll probably have to do it all over again, because this bush just won’t die.
In a recent article about how presidents like to take their vacations, I read about two, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who like to go back to the ranch and chill out by clearing brush. Really!